Tag Archives: Texas

In 2012, the city of Sharpstown, Texas, made the controversial decision not to renew its contract with the local police department and instead hire a private security firm to combat crime.

Since SEAL Security Solutions took over law enforcement in Sharpstown, crime has reportedly dropped by 61 percent in just 20 months.

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James Alexander, director of operations for SEAL Security Solutions said, “Since we’ve been in there, an independent crime study that they’ve had done [indicates] we’ve reduced the crime by 61 percent,” according to Guns.com.

In addition to the apparent increase in efficiency, the private firm is reportedly saving taxpayers roughly $200,000 each year – even though the community is getting more patrol officers than before.

“On a constable patrol contract, it’s either a 70/30 or an 80/20. Meaning they say they patrol your community 70 percent of the time, [while] 30 percent of the time they use for running calls out of your area or writing reports,” Alexander said.

He continued: “The second thing that drastically reduces the crime is that we do directed patrols, meaning we don’t just put an officer out there and say ‘here, go patrol.’ We look at recent crime stats, and we work off of those crime stats. So if we have hotspots in those areas say for that month, we focus and concentrate our efforts around those hotspots.”

The SEAL officers also don’t “receive the same protection, as we are in the private sector,” according to Alexander. He argues that leads to better accountability because they have to worry about keeping their jobs.

The growth is mirrored nationally in the ranks of private police, who increasingly patrol corporate campuses, neighborhoods and museums as the demand for private security has increased and police services have been cut in some places.

The trend has raised concerns in Virginia and elsewhere, because these armed officers often receive a small fraction of the training and oversight of their municipal counterparts. Arrests of private police officers and incidents involving SCOPs overstepping their authority have also raised concerns.

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According to a Texas border television station, when about 2,000 illegal aliens engage in a mass riot, yelling, overturning tents, and setting fires, it is only a “demonstration.”

“Approximately 2,000 federal inmates were involved in a demonstration at a prison facility in Willacy County,” begins the report by television station KGBT.

The riot took place on Friday at a private prison facility in the city of Raymondville, about 40 miles north of the Texas border with Mexico, as Breitbart Texas reported. The private facility is under contract with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and holds primarily illegal aliens, as well as other inmates facing federal charges. The facility can hold a total of around 2,900 detainees.

In their reporting of the riot, KGBT gave a detailed report about the massive mobilization needed to quell the rioters and mentioned that three local schools had been placed on lockdown as a response to the “demonstration.”

“Multiple agencies, including federal and state authorities, were called to secure the perimeter of the Willacy County Correctional Center, a privately owned prison contracted through the federal government,” KGBT staff reported.

The station then provided a detailed account of the rioting.

“Some inmates broke out of the housing area and made their way into the recreational yard prompting a lockdown of the prison. Some inmates were seen shaking the fence. Tear gas was used in an attempt to break up the disturbance… Small fires broke out in three of the units, and the Raymondville Fire Department is on scene for precautionary measures,” KGBT reported.

While the story is a chilling account of events, KGBT chose to minimize the seriousness of the situation by calling it a “demonstration,” rather than a prison riot by illegal aliens.

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared February 2nd to be “Chris Kyle Day” to honor the Texan who became known the most lethal sniper in American history. Kyle was also recently immortalized in the blockbuster film “American Sniper.”

Kyle was credited with 150 sniper kills during his four tours of duty in Iraq as a Navy Seal. He was tragically shot and killed on February 2, 2013, while trying to help a fellow veteran who was allegedly suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Taya Kyle, the widow of Chris Kyle, was recently honored by the organization AmericanSnipers.org with a donation of $62,000. According to a Breitbart News article by AWR Hawkins, the group raised the money by raffling a McMillan .338 Lapua sniper rifle. She also recently made news by shooting an antelope on a hunting trip taken to honor her late husband.

After his death, Kyle was honored with a memorial service in the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The service along with the miles-long funeral procession were also featured in the movie honoring Kyle.

During that service, then Governor Rick Perry said, “Chris Kyle was the public face of an anonymous breed of American warrior who are handed the hardest missions and assume the largest risks,” Former Governor Rick Perry said. “Chris was among the very best at what he did, and he saved countless American lives in the process. Our state and our nation suffered a profound loss with his passing. I am honored to have known Chris and to have called him my friend. Anita and I send our deepest condolences to his wife, Taya, his children and the thousands of service members that were his extended family.”

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A Texas woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison after stealing her father’s Social Security benefits for two decades as she kept his mummified corpse in a storage unit along with his car.

Judith Maria Broughton forged her father’s signature and had more $245,226 of his retirement benefits deposited into a joint banking account, after he died in 1990. His body was rotting in a storage unit she leased in Kentucky until it was discovered in January.

On July 3, 2014, Broughton pleaded guilty to a one count Information charging her with willfully and knowingly stealing Social Security Administration Retirement Insurance Benefits. By pleading guilty, Broughton admitted that she forged her father’s signature causing SSA benefits paid in the name of her father, Luther D. Broughton, to be electronically deposited into a joint checking account. From June 1990 to August 2011, she collected the funds deposited into the account even after his death. Broughton further admitted to converting those monies to her own personal use.

According to court records, Luther Broughton died in June 1990 and the defendant leased a storage unit in Lexington, KY, to conceal his death. A search of the storage unit on January 8, 2014, revealed the mummified remains of Luther D. Broughton as well as his personal belongings including an automobile. Also, the defendant’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Broughton’s, Social Security benefits were being electronically deposited into a joint checking account with the defendant. Mary Elizabeth Broughton’s whereabouts have not been determined and her SSA benefits have been suspended.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday allowed Texas to enforce its voter identification law for the Nov. 4 midterm elections, denying emergency requests from the Obama administration and other challengers who said the law harmed minority voting rights.

The high court’s move, announced in an early morning order, is a setback for civil-rights advocates and marks the court’s fourth recent action on a state’s election procedures just ahead of Election Day.

Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos said the Texas law was the strictest in the country for several reasons, including because it allowed the fewest forms of acceptable photo identification and didn’t make certain accommodations for the poor and the elderly.

The judge said more than half a million registered voters, many of them black or Hispanic, were expected to lack the ID necessary to vote in person at the polls.

This week the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on an emergency appeal by state officials, decided Texas could use the voter ID law for this election. The appeals court said the state already had been training poll workers to apply the voter ID law and said it was too late to change the rules so close to the date when voters were due to begin casting ballots. Early voting in Texas begins Monday.

The appeals court said it was guided in part by recent Supreme Court emergency actions on election rules in Ohio, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The results in those cases pointed in different directions, but in each case the justices blocked late changes to state election procedures, seemingly out of concern for voter confusion. The high court didn’t offer an explanation for its course of action in those cases.

The same held true Saturday when a majority of the court issued a brief written order that allowed Texas to use its voter ID law. But three justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – dissented, saying the court should have intervened.

“The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters,” Justice Ginsburg wrote for the dissenters.

The Justice Department and civil rights groups had filed emergency appeals with the Supreme Court, saying there was no justification for allowing Texas to use the voter ID law after a judge found it to be discriminatory.

Texas said in court papers that its law wasn’t discriminatory and was approved to deter and detect voter fraud. The state also disputed the trial judge’s finding that large numbers of voters could be disenfranchised, saying it had taken extensive steps to mitigate “the already minor inconveniences associated with securing photo identification.”

The Supreme Court action Saturday wasn’t a ruling on the legality of the Texas law. The court was considering only whether the law could be applied while Texas appealed the trial judge’s ruling.

With the high court’s action in favor of Texas, three of the court’s four recent emergency actions in election matters have favored the states. The court also allowed Ohio to cut back on early voting and let North Carolina prohibit same-day voter registration and out-of-precinct voting. In a win for civil rights advocates, the court blocked Wisconsin from enforcing its voter ID law for the midterms.

A second health care worker tested positive for Ebola late Tuesday, the Texas Department of Health said in a statement early Wednesday morning.

The unidentified worker reported a fever late Tuesday and was immediately isolated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. The individual was among those who helped care for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S.

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Officials at a press conference Wednesday morning said this health worker ”preliminarily tested positive for Ebola.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct an additional test for absolute confirmation that the individual has the virus.

“Like Nina Pham, this is a heroic person, a person who has dedicated her life… to serving others,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said at the press conference, making a nod to the nurse diagnosed with Ebola Sunday after caring for Duncan. ” This is a person is dealing with this diagnosis with the grit and grace and determination like Nina has dealt with this diagnosis.”

Officials said that they have interviewed the health worker and identified others who she may have come into contact with while monitoring herself for any symptoms. Early Wednesday morning as people were waking up, officials were at the apartment building where this nurse lived, knocking on doors to alert them to the situation. This woman lived alone and did not have any pets, officials said.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said at the press conference that “phase one” of decontamination of any common areas and areas outside the apartment have already taken place. He added that he expected “phase two” – the internal cleaning of her apartment and car – to be complete by this afternoon.

With this second infected health care worker and 75 others who had cared for Duncan still being monitored, Rawlings warned that “it may get worse before it gets better.”

“I think there are two things that I hearken back to this: The only way that we were going to beat this is person by person, moment by moment, detail by detail,” he said. “The second is we want to minimize rumors and maximize facts. We want to deal with facts, not fear.”

On Sunday, officials announced that Pham was diagnosed with Ebola, though it was unclear exactly how she contracted the virus. Officials said on Tuesday that she was in good condition.

When asked about this issue of how health care workers were exposed to the virus when taking precautions with protective gear and other procedures, Dr. Daniel Varga with Texas Health Presbyterian said they are “looking at every element” that could have led to these new infections.

“I don’t think we have a systematic institutional problem,” Varga said. “We’re looking at every element of our personal protective equipment and infection control inside the hospital. We don’t have an answer for this right now but we’re looking at every possible element.”

However, the fact that this second person was in isolation within 90 minutes of taking her temperature and seeing she had a fever is “continued evidence that our monitoring program is working,” Varga said.

Judge Jenkins added more about this monitoring program later in the news conference.

“What this case further illustrates… is Ebola comes from [contact with] body fluids of a symptomatic Ebola victim. That’s how [two health care workers] contracted the disease and that’s how Eric Duncan contracted the disease,” he said.

While Jenkins said that they are not going to set up “protective orders” for the 75 other health care workers being monitored, they are setting up a place where “if they want to be away from their families, they can choose to do so.”

The 48 other people that Duncan had contact with who were not health care workers are nearing the end of the 21-day monitoring program and are asymptomatic, according to health officials.

A Texas healthcare worker who provided care for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient to be given a diagnosis of Ebola in the US, who died on Wednesday, has tested positive for the deadly virus.

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At a Sunday morning press conference at the hospital, it was confirmed that a close contact of the healthcare worker – who officials said was wearing full protective gear when he or she made contact with Duncan – has also been placed, “proactively”, in isolation.

Dr Tom Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the diagnosis of the healthcare worker showed there had been a clear breach of safety protocol at the hospital.

The worker was reported to be in stable condition in isolation at the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas. The hospital is no longer taking any other emergency patients.

Frieden told CBS the worker had treated Duncan multiple times after the Liberian man was diagnosed, and said that all those who had treated Duncan were now considered to be potentially exposed.

Healthcare workers treating Duncan were to follow CDC protocol that included wearing protective gear. Among the things CDC will investigate, Frieden said, is how the workers took off that gear – because removing it incorrectly can lead to a contamination.

At the hospital press conference, Dallas County judge Clay Jenkins said the healthcare worker was a “heroic person who provided care for Mr Duncan” but did not release his or her name. News of the second diagnosis broke overnight, after a preliminary blood test on the healthcare worker, who had reported a low-grade fever on Friday night.

On Sunday morning Dr Dan Varga, of Texas Health Presbyterian hospital, said the worker had been “following a self-monitoring regimen prescribed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” (CDC) and that “the entire process from the patient’s self-monitoring to the admission to isolation took less than 90 minutes”.

He added: “The patient’s condition is stable. In addition, a close contact has also been proactively placed in isolation. The caregiver and the family have requested total privacy, so we can’t discuss any more details of the situation.”

Dr Varga said the hospital was now not taking any other emergency patients. Answering questions, he said the healthcare worker had been wearing full protective gear and following all CDC guidelines when he or she made contact with Duncan.

Mike Rawlings, the mayor of Dallas, addressed likely public fears brought about by the second case. He said: “We heard about this around midnight and have been working throughout the morning to make sure the citizens of Dallas are safe when they wake up. I believe I can say they are.”

Rawlings detailed protective measures taken by the city, including the Dallas fire and rescue haz-mat team “clearing up and decontaminating any of the open areas of an apartment complex” and “standing by to make sure nobody enters that apartment complex”.

“Furthermore,” he said, “we have knocked on every door in that block and talked to every person who came to the door to explain what has happened and what we have done.”

Rawlings said there was believed to be a pet inside the apartment of the healthcare worker now in isolation. He said the pet was not believed to show any signs of Ebola, and that authorities would take care of it. This week in Spain, a dog owned by an Ebola patient was euthanised.

A hospital statement detailed the steps taken by the hospital since the admission of Duncan, on 28 September, on his second visit.

“We have known that further cases of Ebola are a possibility among those who were in contact with Mr Duncan before he passed away last week,” the statement said. “The system of monitoring, quarantine and isolation was established to protect those who cared for Mr Duncan as well as the community at large by identifying any potential ebola cases as early as possible and getting those individuals into treatment immediately.”

Duncan travelled from Liberia to the US on 19 September to join his girlfriend, Louise Troh, the mother of his son, Karsiah. After falling ill a few days later, Duncan was initially sent home from hospital, despite telling a nurse he had recently travelled from west Africa. He was taken by ambulance to Texas Health Presbyterian on 28 September, where he was admitted and placed in isolation.

He was confirmed to have Ebola two days later.

It is believed Duncan contracted the disease while helping take his landlord’s 19-year-old daughter to an Ebola treatment ward in Monrovia. He did not declare that he had been in contact with Ebola when he completed a pre-flight questionnaire at Monrovia airport before travelling to the US.

The current outbreak of Ebola has killed more than 4,000 people in west Africa.

In his opening remarks on Sunday, judge Jenkins sought to calm public fears. He said: “I want to stress an important fact. You cannot contract Ebola other than from bodily fluids of a symptomatic Ebola victim. You cannot contract Ebola by walking by people in the street or from contacts who are not symptomatic. There is nothing about this case that changes that basic premise of science.

“And so it’s important that while this is obviously bad news, it is not news that should bring about panic. We have a strategy to monitor this and we will go to that strategy to keep the community safe.”

The hospital said it was “triple-checking our full compliance with updated CDC guidelines. We are also continuing to monitor all staff who had some relation to Mr. Duncan’s care even if they are not assumed to be at significant risk of infection”.